The table below lists Cushitic languages with more than 500,000 speakers. The remaining languages have significantly smaller populations, and some of them are small enough to be endangered or on the brink of extinction.

Because West Cushitic languages have few vocabulary items in common with the other Cushitic tongues, some scholars consider them to form a separate branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, called Omotic. The table below lists the most populous Omotic (West Cushitic Languages).

SomaliSomali is the only Cushitic language that enjoys an official status. It is one of the national languages of Somalia, along with Arabic.

Oromo
Oromo is a trade language used in Ethiopia for official government purposes, commerce, as well as by the public media and the educational system up to the eighth grade. It is also used in a variety of literature.

Dialects

Most Cushitic languages have several dialects. For instance, Oromo and Somali have three major dialects each, while Afar and Bedawi each have four. In most cases, the dialects are mutually intelligible.

Structure

Sound system
Most syllables in Cushitic languages end in a vowel or a single consonant. Consonant clusters do not occur at the beginning or at the end of words.

Vowels
Most Cushitic languages have five vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning. They can be short or long. The length of the vowel makes a difference in word meaning e.g., in Oromo, laga ‘river’ and laagaa ‘roof of the mouth.’ In the table below, long vowels are marked by a macron over the vowel. In writing, long vowels are usually represented by a double letter.

Consonants
Most Cushitic languages have 22-25 consonants. Some of the distinguishing characteristics of their consonant systems are listed below.

Many consonants can be single or geminated (doubled). Consonant length distinguishes word meaning.

Some languages, such as Oromo, have ejective consonants, such as /p’, t’, k’, tʃ‘/, which are produced with a simultaneous closure of the glottis so when they are released there is a noticeable burst of air.

Some languages, such as Somali and Oromo, have implosive consonants, produced with the air sucked in rather than expelled; it has no equivalent in English.

Some languages, such as Somali, have retroflex consonants, such as /ɗ/, that are pronounced with/, the tip of the tongue curled so that its underside comes in contact with the roof of the mouth.

Native Cushitic words do not have the consonants /p/, /v/, and /z/. These sounds occur only in loanwords.

In some Cushitic languages, such as Somali and Afar, there are uvular and pharyngeal consonants that have no equivalents in English.

Tones and stressCushitic languages are usually described as being tonal. Tone in these language is usually closely associated with stress, e.g., in Somali high tone has strong stress, falling tone has weaker stress, and low tone has no stress.. Some linguists feel that the Cushitic system is could be more accurately described as having pitch-accent rather than tone. The tonal system of Cushitic languages operates at the grammatical, rather than at the lexical level, as it does in languages such as Chinese. For instance, the masculine-feminine distinction is represented by tone in words such as in Somaliínan ‘boy’ and inán ‘girl.’

Grammar
The grammatical systems of Cushitic languages are quite complex. Although there is considerable variation among the languages with respect to their grammatical structure, most of them share certain features, such as for instance, all Cushitic languages are inflected and tend to use postpositions more than prepositions.

Nouns, adjectives
Nouns and adjectives in Cushitic languages may have some or all of the following features:

Nouns have an inherent (masculine or feminine) which cannot be determined by the form of the noun, with a few exceptions when biological gender is associated with a particular suffix, such as in Oromo-eessa for masculine and -eetti for feminine nouns, e.g., obboleessa ‘brother’ and obboleetti ‘sister.’

Nouns can be marked for definiteness, but not for indefiniteness, e.g., in Somali definiteness is marked with the suffix -ki or -ka for masculine nouns and -ti or -ta for feminine nouns. Indefiniteness is not marked, e.g., nin ‘(a) man,’ and nin-ka ‘the man.’

There is a gender distinction in the 3rd person singular but not in the plural.

There is a distinction between proximal and distal demonstrative pronouns.

Verbs
Cushitic Verbal systems are complex and vary considerably from language to language.

Cushitic verbs consist of a stem and suffixes which may represent person, gender, number, tense-aspect, mood, and voice. Stems often consist of roots made up of consonants with vowels representing various grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, number, mood, etc.

In some Cushitic languages, there are preverbal units (sometimes called “selectors”) that anticipate inflectional categories of the following verb, such as tense, sequence, direction, case, or clause type.

Word order
The typical word order in Oromo sentences is Subject – Object – Verb. However, other orders are possible in order to mark the focus (new or prominent information ) in the sentence. Modifiers, articles, pronouns, and case markers follow the nouns they modify.

Writing

Until the 1970s, Afaan Oromo was written with either the Ge’ez script (also known as Ethiopic script) or the Latin alphabet. Between 1974 and 1991 under the military regime, the writing of Afaan Oromo in any script was forbidden. The Latin alphabet (Qubee) was adopted after the overthrow of the military regime in 1991. This has led to a greatly increased production of texts.

Somali was not written until the Osmanya alphabet was developed in 1920 in an attempt to forestall the implementation of an Arabic-based alphabet. The Latin alphabet was adopted in 1972. There is no standardized orthography so variations occur.

Ethiopic is another name for the Ge’ez script. We clarified that. Thank you for pointing this out to us.

Jonsen Dawit
February 15, 2017

There seems to be a complete breakdown in communication here. The response seems to be for an entirely difference comment as it ignores the core concern of the original comment. That being: Osman disputes the current(continued) use of the Ethiopic/Ge’ez script for writing the Afar language. His concern is not about the word/term used to identify the script- as the response implies.
I can not speak for the other commenters, but I lived in Ethiopia as a child. During that time I learned the Ethiopic script and have maintained an ongoing infatuation, fascination and deep respect for it- to the point of developing a primitive font for my own uses before I was able to find any others.
I can not speak with any authority, but my own keen observations and informal research concerning script use of Ethiopian languages during an extended visit five years ago suggests that Osman is correct. Both the Oromo & Afar people deeply resent the oppression of their people, culture, language and customs by the various ruling classes of Ethiopia, and have categorically rejected the use of their script (Ethiopic) both out of protest and for practical, technological reasons.
While there may be some who continue to utilize the Ge’ez abugida for the Afar language, I would contend that they are not only in the decisive minority but also probably the elder community members whose familiarity & proficiency with the Latin script is likely limited.
There is certainly no doubt in my mind that the use of Ethiopic for Afar deprecated and soon to be obsolete.

Faduma
July 28, 2017

I enjoyed reading the content. But there are some incorrect information

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